After the defeat and death of Charles the Bold at Nancy his widow, Margaret of York, transferred her residence to Malines, and here she raised and educated the two children of her daughter, Marie of Burgundy, Philip the Handsome and Margaret of Austria. Their father, the Emperor Maximilian, was so occupied with affairs of state over his widely scattered realm that he seldom came to the city, but from 1480 onward the States General of the Netherlands often met here, and in 1491 Philip the Handsome presided at a chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece at the cathedral of St. Rombaut. On his premature death, in 1506, Maximilian again became Regent, as Philip's eldest son Charles was barely six years old. The following year Maximilian made his daughter Margaret of Austria Governess-General of the Netherlands and guardian of Philip's children. Margaret at once chose Malines, where she had herself been educated, as her seat of government and there she reigned as Regent until her death twenty-three years later. This period was the golden age in the history of the city on the Dyle, its brief day of splendour. In her infancy Margaret had been betrothed to the son of the King of France, Louis XI--the cunning enemy of her house whose plots had brought about the ruin of her grandfather, Charles the Bold. She was only three, and the Prince Dauphin, afterwards Charles the Eighth, was only twelve. Nine years later a more advantageous alliance caused him to renounce this betrothal, and Margaret was subsequently married by proxy to the son of the King of Spain. On her voyage from Flushing to Spain a storm arose which nearly wrecked her ship, and after it had somewhat subsided she and her companions amused themselves by each writing her own epitaph. That composed by Margaret, then a sprightly girl of eighteen, is well known: _Cy gist Margot la gentil' Damoiselle, Qu' ha deux marys et encor est pucelle._ Eventually, however, she arrived safely at Burgos, but her young husband, Prince John of Asturias, died suddenly seven months later of a malignant fever. At the age of nineteen, therefore, Margaret had already missed being Queen of France and Queen of Spain. After two years at the Spanish court, where she was very popular, she returned to Flanders, arriving in 1500, just in time to be one of the godmothers at the christening of her nephew, Charles, at the church of St. Jean in Ghent. The following year Margaret married Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, surnamed the Handsome, who was the same age as herself. This time her married life proved to be only a little longer than the other, for her husband died in 1504. Left twice a widow while still in the bloom of youth, the Duchess devoted herself to poetry and the erection of a church at Brou in her second husband's duchy of Savoy. There, on the walls, woodwork, stained glass windows and tombs she repeated her last motto: FORTUNE . INFORTUNE . FORT . UNE